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Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

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31–40 of 49 posts

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#31
post #6
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

>>I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. I don't think most people have this expectation. Banks to be accountable for customers breaking law? What's an example of this? If I open a bank account in a different country, under an LLC, to illegally avoid paying taxes or to receive kickbacks it's up to the bank to figure that out? I do not expect ban…

Enough people have shot up schools that I think some sort of response to "I'm going to kill people at school" is warranted. A conviction may not be the best outcome, but I don't think it's entirely safe to ignore all of them.

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#32
post #31
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. I don't think most people have this expectation. Banks to be accountable for customers breaking law? What's an example of this? If I open a bank account in a different country, under an LLC, to illegally avoid paying taxes or to receive kickbacks it's up to the bank to figure that out? I do not expect ban…

Enough people have shot up schools that I think some sort of response to "I'm going to kill people at school" is warranted. A conviction may not be the best outcome, but I don't think it's entirely safe to ignore all of them.

I guarantee it will be 99.99% false positives. Until people learn to censor themselves.

But that's really irrelevant. The government shouldn't have the right to spy on people's private conversations, if they aren't suspects. Whether they occur in real life or on the internet is irrelevant. And people shouldn't live in fear of saying the wrong thing and being taken away, like they were in 1984.

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#33
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

Of course most people don't expect that. Why do you think bitcoin was so popular here?

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#34
post #7

It's also impossible. "I'm going to kill some soldiers when I get back" might refer to my super secret terror plot, or my PlayStation-related plans for the evening.

And how do you differentiate 'IS' with 'is'?

How do you do it?

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#35
post #7

It's also impossible. "I'm going to kill some soldiers when I get back" might refer to my super secret terror plot, or my PlayStation-related plans for the evening.

And how do you differentiate 'IS' with 'is'?

Besides capitalization, it's noun vs. verb. That sort of stuff is generally not hard to pick out with NLP.

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#36
post #5
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

Did you even read the article? We shouldn't demand it because of privacy concerns. Same reason we don't have phone companies screen all of our phonecalls. Because we're not guilty until proven innocent. Besides, then things like encryption become questionable. If the ISP can't screen your data, what's to stop them from kicking you off their network? Who knows what illegal things you're doing if they can't validate it…

It's so obviously wrong, in fact, that suggesting this is the level of stupidity things would actually be implemented with is a bit of a strawman. A false positive rate of 99.99% isn't useful to anybody. You'd also monitor their netflix history to see if they're just reading up on something they saw on Dexter or Breaking Bad last night, you'd look at searches around the same time period to guess the intent more accurately, you'd have a general psychological profile built up to determine whether they're actually unstable, and you'd have purchase records that would help establish a baseline for how likely it is that they could actually pose a threat to anyone. And that's just what a layman thought of in two minutes. DHS has actual professionals working on this as their job.

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#37
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

Of course most people don't expect that. Why do you think bitcoin was so popular here?

Because you could buy drugs with it conveniently and in relative safety.

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#38
post #36
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you even read the article? We shouldn't demand it because of privacy concerns. Same reason we don't have phone companies screen all of our phonecalls. Because we're not guilty until proven innocent. Besides, then things like encryption become questionable. If the ISP can't screen your data, what's to stop them from kicking you off their network? Who knows what illegal things you're doing if they can't validate it…

It's so obviously wrong, in fact, that suggesting this is the level of stupidity things would actually be implemented with is a bit of a strawman. A false positive rate of 99.99% isn't useful to anybody. You'd also monitor their netflix history to see if they're just reading up on something they saw on Dexter or Breaking Bad last night, you'd look at searches around the same time period to guess the intent more accur…

You'd also monitor their netflix history [...] guess the intent [...] have a general psychological profile [...] have purchase records

DHS has actual professionals working on this

And what could possibly go wrong with that kind of power in the hands of "DHS professionals"...

Is that the world you want to live in?

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#39
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

And how effective have those regulations been?

Re: Internet companies should not be monitoring terrorists or anyone else

#40
post #2

Why not? We expect and demand that banks monitor billions of transactions between 100s of millions of customers for evidence of money laundering and terrorism financing - and fine them billions of dollars when their controls or oversight are deemed insufficient. I expect most us agree that banks _should_ be held accountable for the legitimacy of their customers behaviour. Why should the same standards not be demanded…

So should coffee shops be responsible for monitoring their customer's discussions and reporting suspicious behaviour to the police? Should they be forced to record the name and address and date visited for all their customers to aid any future investigation?
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